


Heaven is a Place on Earth

by RedBlazer



Series: San Junipero [2]
Category: Black Mirror, Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Bucky Barnes's Trigger Words, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s03e04 San Junipero, M/M, POV Bucky Barnes, POV Steve Rogers, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Post-HYDRA Reveal, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Recovery, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 08:21:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13454247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedBlazer/pseuds/RedBlazer
Summary: Bucky takes a drink of his tea, looks around the kitchen again. “I got a question.” He says. Steve skeptically looks at him over the rim of his mug. Bucky pointedly tries not to notice how Steve’s eyes are getting a little red. “You said you could have your dream house, anything you ever wanted and this—“ Bucky points to the five little rooms  in the apartment. “—this is the best you could come up with? This place is like our place in Brooklyn, minus the rat traps.”Steve blinks at Bucky like he’s an idiot. Oh, that’s a look Bucky remembers.“Buck, we were never happier than when we lived there.” Steve sounds so damn genuine that it makes an unfamiliar lump form in Bucky’s throat.“But that place in D.C. and living with Stark—the mansions, I’m sure—““I was never happier.” Steve says pointedly, cutting Bucky off completely. “Even without the heat, and with the rats. Never happier.”----------In order to break the link between Bucky and his trigger words, Steve takes Bucky to the one place he knows Bucky won't be able to hurt anyone. And together they make new associations with these words that hold so much power over Bucky.





	Heaven is a Place on Earth

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU that takes place in the universe of the Black Mirror episode 'San Junipero' on Netflix. I reccommend watching it, as it is my favorite episode of television ever. There are lesbians, there are fabulous 1980s fashions. You will laugh. You will cry
> 
> If you decide to carry on, you'll be able to understand the basic premise of the episode and what is happening here. There is also a prequel to the series that explains Steve's connection to San Junipero. I reccommend reading it. It's Steve/Peggy.
> 
> A lot of this series will deal with Bucky trying to break himself of the programming that HYDRA did on him throughout the years. That's obviously a sensitive subject, but I'm trying to handle it in the most respectful way possible. There will be some serious feels, but I also wanted to use this story as a way for Steve and Bucky to reconnect and share some nostalgia for what their lives were like before the war. Never fear, there will always be a happy ending in my stories.
> 
> This story takes place after the events of Civil War and before Infinity War. It is also unbetaed! So please allow for some mistakes.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

Steve promised him oblivion, or at least to shut out all the light in Bucky’s mind with that glass coffin of his.

And yes, there had been darkness and quiet, coming on like a soft blanket covering him and shutting out the world. Nothing like the drowning static of going down in the hands of HYDRA—only, Bucky can’t think about that.

Bucky was granted a single moment of peace and silence when the cover was thrown off and Bucky finds himself hearing the gentle crashing of the ocean somewhere and the tinkle of voices outside. Anxiety coils in his belly as he sits bolt upright in bed, the soldier inside him seeking an answer to one of the two questions that it ever seems to know: Where is the threat?

The other question being: What is my mission?

Bucky’s eyes search the small room from faintly peeling wallpaper, to the lace curtains in the open window, and finally to the other narrow bed, pushed against the opposite wall.

Somewhere a teakettle whistles and Bucky hits the deck. He lies on his stomach, looking first under his own bed and then the one across from him. He breathes against the pounding in his ears and the desire to run from whatever it is outside the four walls of this bedroom.

The room reminds him of a small apartment in a square housing block in an anonymous neighborhood in an even more nondescript country. It smells faintly of other people and of age. The open window carries in the salty smell of the ocean.

The soft patter of steps somewhere outside the door has Bucky up on his feet and standing behind the door before he even knows what he’s doing. His hand moves on its own to his belt, but finds thin air instead of the knife that’s been strapped there since he can really remember.

The curling of his fingers distracts his for a moment. The cool air passing over them makes Bucky look down at the rolled up shirtsleeves of a worn gray shirt and a hand, tan, strong, and very clearly not made from metal.

He’s holding it up to his face, staring at it in horror as the door opens. The distraction costing him precious seconds. But then he’s a flash of movement, shoving the door with all of his strength. He doesn’t register a pulse of pain if there is any. There’s a crash from the other side and the heavy sound of a body hitting the ground.

Bucky wishes that wasn’t such a familiar sound to his ears.

The soldier moves for him, pulling the door open once again.

There’s a shade—a memory from a past life—lying on the floor, sprawled amongst the scattered remains of a tea pot and two mugs. “Bucky.” The memory says from the floor. A voice he remembers more than his own speaks a name that he knows is his, but in a kind of uncertain way. Huge blue eyes look Bucky up and down in a cautious way. “This was a huge mistake wasn’t it?”

The man before Bucky pushes himself to his feet in an unsteadily, shaking out of hands and feet like he’s getting used to them. Bucky looks down at him, and he knows intrinsically that this is Steve. His Steve, the way he was before the war, back when their heat going out was one of the larger problems they faced.

“We talked about it—on the outside—“ Steve gestures over his shoulder as though that’s going to reveal anything of value to Bucky, “and we thought seeing me like this,” he motions to all of him, the bony elbows and how his blonde hair is flopping into his eyes, “and that—your arm—it might help you being to disassociate yourself from your HYDRA programming. But this was a mistake—we shouldn’t have.”

Steve is back peddling, and Bucky is somehow two steps closer to the other man, putting two hands around both of his arms, and pressing him back against the wall. Likely a little too forcefully, and though Steve blinks up at him in a startled way, he doesn’t look scared of Bucky—and that’s good.

“Steve.” Bucky grunts, “Explain. Small words.” He studies Steve’s face from this much closer, trying to suss out if this could possibly be some kind of new HYDRA programming. If it is, it knows the exact placement of every freckle on Steve’s face. It knows that Steve always smelled like pencil shavings and clean laundry back in the day.

Steve nods, makes no move to get out of Bucky’s hold.

“You’re here with me, Buck. But you’re also not.” Steve explains. Bucky’s heart rate spikes and his hands flex on Steve’s biceps. They’re sharing the space of a phone booth. “We have technology now, I’ve used it before, and it’s totally safe.” He shrugs one arm out of Bucky’s grip and touches his temple, Bucky resists the urge to shy away. “We take this, and we put it in here. In this space.”

Bucky’s stomach drops out and he looks down the hallway at the unassuming kitchen and then back into the bedroom. “Steve, that’s not—do you have any idea what you could do to someone—what they would do if they could—“ it’s maybe the most he’s spoken at one time in years, but the panic welling inside his chest makes it so. “We could be trapped—changed.”

Steve shakes his head. “We’re on a secure server. Nothing can hurt you here, Bucky—you can’t hurt anything here either. The people who set this up are in Wakanda, they think this could help us find a way to deprogram you.” He looks hopeful and stubborn, and Bucky remembers flashes of that face, a black eye forming in an alley, or a pencil in hand at the kitchen table. “Come sit down with me.” Steve tell him gently, though he’s not taking no for an answer.

He leads Bucky down the narrow hallway to a whitewashed kitchen with a small ice box, stove, and a scrubbed little table for two. One of the windows over the sink is thrown open, and beyond Bucky can hear people laughing on the street, carrying on.

“What about the others?” Bucky asks as Steve retrieves two more mugs from the cupboard and takes them to the stove where the kettle is still hot.

“The others are more complicated.” Steve concedes. “This is heaven for 90%, and the rest are tourists like you and I.” He looks over his shoulder at Bucky, at the blank look on his face. “They’re dead Bucky. But, before they died, they put it into their directive that they would like to come here, and so they were uploaded onto one of thousands of servers with other people like them.”

“That’s something out of science fiction, Steve. We can’t be inside a computer.” Bucky says, but then he throws his hands up and sees they’re both flesh and blood. He thinks about the fact that for the first time in as long as he can remember, a low rumbling ache isn’t filling all of his joints and muscles. He feels full and sated, rested and at rest.

Steve brings two mugs of tea over to the table and then goes to the ice box for an old fashioned glass bottle of milk and a sugar bowl from the counter.

“Everything feels real as anything in San Junipero, Bucky.” Steve sticks his finger in the sugar bowl and then brings it to his lips, a move that strikes Bucky as familiar, though he can’t place it. “Tastes real. Smells real. Because it is real. Real enough. And that’s enough for the people here. They just want to keep living.”

Bucky takes the mug into his hands, feeling the warmth from the ceramic seep into his skin. Steam curls from the tea inside. Bucky tells himself he should add some milk or wait a minute for it to cool, but instead he steels himself, knowing that if Steve’s been truthful with him, nothing will happen. Nothing will hurt.

Bucky takes a massive gulp of tea which by all rights should burn the hell out of his mouth, but instead of pain, the liquid that touches his lips is pleasantly warm and doesn’t scald his taste buds.

Steve’s narrowed eyes meet Bucky’s from across the table. “You couldn’t take my word for it?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

Bucky shakes his head, it should be obvious that Bucky’s got to be his own canary in the coal mine. He needs to be the first to know when things are changing for the worse.

“What about the others? We’re not dead. Why are we here?”

Steve shrugs, “People find it therapeutic. Old people—like us. It gives them the ability to go back to their best selves, their best time. They can have the best clothes, the house they always wanted, drinks, dancing, sex, whatever.”

Jesus, if Bucky needed any indicator that this really is Steve and not some kind of HYDRA program, it’s the instant and all encompassing blush that crosses the other man’s face and then colors the tips of his ears.

Bucky has to pull his leg. “That why you came here, to cradle rob?”

The other man lets out a cough, trying to mask it with a sip of his tea. Steve takes a moment to pound the front of his chest with a fist, looking uncomfortably like the Steve that Bucky has gotten flashes of, sitting up in bed, hacking into a handkerchief. Only this Steve has color to his cheeks and the room doesn’t smell of menthol and stale sweat.

“Buck—“ Steve breaks Bucky’s train of thought with a gentle hand on his shoulder. And that Bucky remembers the feeling of, Steve’s hands aren’t that much smaller than they were after the serum. He’s always had long fingers and cold hands.

Bucky shakes his head, focusing on the man before him and not the one from another kitchen, another lifetime ago. “Fine. I’m fine.”

Steve nods stiffly, “I came here for Peggy.” He says it tightly. “You remember her, don’t you?”

“Red lipstick. Mean right hook. Didn’t she shoot you?” Bucky puts the threads of memory together.

Steve exhales shakily. “She shot at me, but yeah, that was Peggy. She was here for a bit. Stark bent the rules and hooked me up to the system.” He pauses and then it turns into a full stop.

“She didn’t stick around, did she?” Bucky asks. Steve shakes his head. “Peggy wasn’t the kind of gal who liked to be cooped up, Steve.”

“Naw, you’re right.” Steve tries to say it lightly, but the raw emotion he’s feeling bleeds through. Bucky feels like he’s trying to study Steve to repeat it in an acting class. Like there will be a test. He remembers how easy he used to smile, feel angry, feel anything other than the need to complete a mission and be on the lookout for trouble.

Bucky takes a drink of his tea, looks around the kitchen again. “I got a question.” He says. Steve skeptically looks at him over the rim of his mug. Bucky pointedly tries not to notice how Steve’s eyes are getting a little red. “You said you could have your dream house, anything you ever wanted and this—“ Bucky points to the five little rooms in the apartment. “—this is the best you could come up with? This place is like our place in Brooklyn, minus the rat traps.”

Steve blinks at Bucky like he’s an idiot. Oh, that’s a look Bucky remembers.

“Buck, we were never happier than when we lived there.” Steve sounds so damn genuine that it makes an unfamiliar lump form in Bucky’s throat.

“But that place in D.C. and living with Stark—the mansions, I’m sure—“

“I was never happier.” Steve says pointedly, cutting Bucky off completely. “Even without the heat, and with the rats. Never happier.”

One side of Bucky’s mouth curls upwards. He tugs on Steve’s sleeve. “You’re even wearing my hand-me-downs in here, Rogers?”

Steve rolls his eyes, his thumb worrying the line where the shirt was hemmed at the wrist to make it fit his shorter limbs. “You think I’m bad, check yourself out, champ.”

Bucky gulps down the rest of his tea as though it will fortify him somehow and makes for the bathroom. Steve follows him through the bedroom and into the small bathroom. It’s actually far more modern than the rest of the apartment, there’s a shower and bathtub combination and a double sink vanity with a huge mirror.

Bucky swears as he catches sight of himself there. He’s dressed like he just came home from the docks, minus jacket and cap. His grey collared shirt is old and worn on the cuffs, laundered so many times that it’s incredibly soft against his skin. His pants are practically under his pecs, did they really wear them this high that long ago? And of course, there are the suspenders over his shoulders to keep the pants at perfect height on his waist.

But it’s his head that really concerns Bucky—or rather his face. He looks younger, visibly less stark. His cheeks are rounder, haven’t been cut down by losing weight and undergoing the treatments. The smile lines around his eyes are pronounced in a way that make him look somewhat perpetually winsome, always ready to break into a smirk. His jawline is still sharp enough to cut glass, but it lacks any kind of beard other than a shadow from having not shaved since that morning. And above all of that is his hair, styled to within an inch of its life with pomade.

Bucky shakes out his hands at his sides nervously. He’s discomforted by the fact that he’s not completely covered, the shirt is open at the throat as he was want to do back in the day. He doesn’t have layers of tactical gear and protective clothing to wrap himself in. He feels bare and vulnerable in a way that he wasn’t expecting.

“It’s pretty wild isn’t it?” Steve asks, leaning against the door in an absent way. He’s been watching Bucky this whole time. Bucky neglects to ask just how long he’s been in that glass coffin. How many times Steve’s looked at him from beyond that glass wall.

“I feel like a ghost.” Bucky grunts out.

“Here, try this.” Steve says, stepping into the bathroom. “Close your eyes.”

If Steve really was a HYDRA program, this would be a really great opportunity to kill Bucky. He shakes his head against the thought and closes his eyes.

“Now think of what you want to be wearing. Think about the color of the fabric and how it would feel to put those clothes on. Really concentrate.” Steve tells him. And Bucky does. He thinks about the olive green of the dress uniform and how the coat was just tight enough that he felt the comforting weight of it.

When he opens his eyes, it’s there. All of it. Including the hat he wore tipped to the side in a ridiculously cocky display when he first put the thing on.

Steve is openly staring at him in the mirror, taking in the gleaming buttons of the coat. They both just kind of take it in for a moment before Bucky feels like he’s suffocating under the weight of the fabric.

He realizes in a moment that he has to get out of this thing as quickly as possible. Bucky wrestles a finger under the tight line of the tie around his neck, pulling it loose with a rough tug. He pushes past Steve, out of the bathroom and into the room he’s only just realized has two beds just like the apartment back in Brooklyn too. He sees Steve huddled against the cold in three layers of clothing and every blanket in the house over him.

“You okay?” Steve asks him, following Bucky from the bathroom and into the bedroom, where Bucky’s fighting with the buttons of his jacket. “Buck, it’s alright.” Steve’s trying to soothe Bucky as best he can, but Bucky’s got nothing but static in his ears.

Steve physically wraps both of his bony arms around Bucky from behind trying to stop his thrashing. And he really shouldn’t be that strong from what Bucky remembered. But his hold is enough to slow Bucky, enough to remind him that he’s in control of this at least. He quiets his brain, stills and remembers pajamas. Stupid stripped pajamas he washed away to threadbare fabric a few years before the war.

When he’s calmed enough for Steve to let him go, Bucky’s pleased to find himself wrapped in flannel and his heart rate is slowly returning to normal.

“Ah, I remember these.” Steve slowly lets Bucky go. “Aunt Gert got you these.”

Bucky shakes his head, “I don’t remember that.” He says shakily, suddenly feeling very tired considering that he’s only been awake for an hour. Bucky remembers Steve telling him he could have whatever he wanted in San Junipero.

“I wanna sleep, Steve.” Bucky tells him. It feels strange to actually voice his needs in such a direct way. He’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the machine to lower over his face in order to correct his programming.

But nothing happens except for Steve stepping away from him and walking across the floor. “Okay Bucky. Whatever you want.” Steve walks to the bed Bucky woke up on and pulls back the covers, revealing crisp white sheets and warm looking blankets. “Sleep as long as you want.” He steps away, sitting on the other bed across from Bucky’s.

Bucky climbs into the bed, feeling the tension drain from muscles that have been tense for decades. He can’t remember the last time he slept in a real bed and not a cot or an air mattress on some floor.

“Will you still be here when I wake up?” Bucky asks, aware that he sounds like a little kid, but he’s so tired it hardly matters.

“I’ll try to be.” Steve says. He’s just sitting there, watching Bucky. “But I’ll be back.” He promises.

He doesn’t even need to say that it’s a promise.

Bucky knows Steve so well, he knows what it sounds like to hear a promise from Steve.

Hell, the last time he heard it, Steve was promising not to make any trouble while Bucky was in France.

And that thought makes Bucky chuckle as he falls asleep.

 

\----------

 

Steve waits an hour, longer than he should considering that Bucky is out for the count. He sits there in the dim light cast by the bedside lamp for an hour until he decides it’s time to go. He makes sure to close and lock all of the windows before he leaves. Not because he’s worried about crime here, but it’s rowdy outside and he doesn’t want Bucky to wake up from the sound.

Steve leaves a note on the counter in case he can’t be back in time for Bucky to wake up. After all, he has to eat and sleep at some point.

He takes one last look at the hallway, willing the broken pottery to disappear, and in a flash it’s gone. And then so is Steve.

 

\----------

 

Steve used to faint before the serum, waking up from visiting San Junipero feels just like waking up after a fainting spell. He’s gasping for air and trying to sit up in an instant.

Instantly, his eyes track to the glass enclosure at the center of the lab where Bucky’s unconscious body looks exactly the same way it had before Steve went under. His vitals show a steady heartbeat and brain activity.

Sam’s lounging in a chair with his feet up on someone’s desk, a magazine resting forgotten on his chest as he has his head tipped back against the chair, asleep. It takes Steve rising from his own chair to wake up Sam.

“Yeah—I’m up. Just...just monitoring vitals here.” Sam taps a few random keys on the laptop on the desk.

Steve rolls his eyes, “S’fine Sam. I didn’t need you here to watch over me.”

“I’ve seen the Matrix man, I know what happens if anything happens.” Sam insists, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Still give me the creeps, thinking about everyone’s grandparents, spending eternity in sex clubs and getting drunk.”

Steve sighs in a put upon way, casting a look over his shoulder. “That’s not it, Sam. It’s a town. Just a town with a beach—and yeah there are some dark corners, but honestly, it’s mostly people celebrating the fact that they’re alive and not in pain anymore.”

“In kinky sex clubs.” Sam supplies.

Steve rolls his eyes and swats Sam’s legs from the desk. “Come on, I’m starving.”

He makes himself leave the lab, taking one last look at Bucky. He tries not to think of Snow White in her glass coffin, practically dead for all the world knew.

 

\----------

 

Bucky lingers in sleep for a long couple of moments, relishing the time before he’ll have to pack up his stuff for the day and head down to the docks. He lazily cocks an ear for the movements of Steve around the drafty apartment, or for his wheezy breathing from the other bed across the room. Hearing neither, Bucky cracks an eye open and starts in the bed, reminded that this isn’t Brooklyn, that this isn’t real.

Steve’s bed in unslept in. The soft shushing sound of waves is muffled by the windows as it reaches Bucky’s ears.

Definitely not Brooklyn then.

He pushes himself up in the bed, stretching his arms over his head in a practiced way, trying to open up his abused joints. But his body moves with ease and without stress to his muscles. Right. Bucky stretches out his legs, tensing his muscles against the warm sheets.

Once he’s spent longer languishing in bed than he has in decades, Bucky rises from the mattress and explores the apartment on his own for the first time. The worn wooden floor is slightly cool against his bare feet and when he looks out his bedroom window, a low fog has rolled over the beach, promising a cool and rainy morning.

In the small kitchen, Bucky finds a percolator like the one he and Steve used to make coffee in, though they could never afford the quality of ground beans in the canister on the counter. Bucky measures out enough for a full pot of coffee, fills it with water and sets it on the stove to boil.

Bucky peeks inside the ice box and finds it far fuller than any refrigerator he’s ever had. There’s more milk, eggs, cheese, a bowl of apples, and containers that look like they hold things like soup and other entrees. He pointedly closes the door at the thought of so many options and settles for toast instead.

They never had a toaster in the apartment, but they have one now, and it only takes two attempts for Bucky to come out with two slices that are neither completely untoasted or charcoal. He slathers them in butter from a dish on the counter and jam from a cupboard near the bread.

Bucky sighs to himself at how domestic this feels. How alien it is to have a morning to himself, to not be always looking over his shoulder.

He’s finished the first slice of toast when he catches sight of a note on the other counter near the sink. Wow, what an amazing tactical agent he is. Bucky stood in that kitchen for nearly 10 minutes before he discovered the paper.

The note is from Steve, brief in his neat architectural handwriting.

 

B—

There’s food in the kitchen. I’ll be back in time for lunch! Close your eyes and think of something to read if you want.

Take care,

S

 

Huh. Bucky would really like to read something that has absolutely nothing to do with his past, nothing to do with Brooklyn, and something Steve liked. Steve always had good taste in books, his library books would often be returned late because Bucky would read them after Steve was done with them.

So Bucky closes his eyes and holds out his hands, waiting for something to appear. He feels like an idiot until the heavy weight of a book lands in his hands and he opens his eyes.

“Harry Potter, huh?” Bucky asks to whatever computer runs this world. But he hefts the book under an arm, and takes the rest of his toast into the small living room. There’s a long window seat that looks out over the main steet of the town below, Bucky drops the book down on the cushioned seat to press his nose to the glass in curiosity.

Down on the street there are a few people wandering around. Women in familiar dresses meander out of the grocery store with shopping bags full. Couples stroll down to a diner on one of the corners. A group of rowdy men roll through town in a convertible with several surfboards lashed to the car. It looks like the 1940’s. Every inch of it. The only difference is everyone looks happy and they’re all around the same age. There are no children, just vaguely early twenties aged people.

These people are dead, Bucky reminds himself and something sour coils in his stomach.

He pulls himself away from the window and goes back to the kitchen to retrieve the whole percolator and a mug. There’s a small table to set everything on within reach.

Bucky pours himself a cup of coffee, reminds himself of the definition of compartmentalization and cracks open the cover of the book.

 

\------------

 

Steve has the presence of mind to come back to the apartment by knocking on the door. He doesn’t know how it will go over if he suddenly just appears.

But then when no one answers for a good 30 seconds, Steve regrets his decision. He knocks again, calling out. “Bucky, it’s me! It’s Steve.”

The door cracks open a fraction, revealing one grey eye and the shoulder of the pajamas he’s still wearing from the night before.

Bucky pointedly looks over Steve’s shoulder down the stairs to the apartment. Steve steps aside so he can get a good view. “There’s no peephole on the door.” Bucky says awkwardly as he opens it to Steve. “Though, in my experience, those are better for people breaking in somewhere than seeing who is at the door.”

Steve’s raised eyebrows make Bucky reconsider his words, he opens his mouth to backtrack, but Steve stops him with a raised hand. “It’s okay, Buck. I want you to be honest with me. You know what, you want a peep hole,” Steve puts a hand over a spot in the center of the door and when he pulls it away, there’s a glass peephole with a shutter on their side of the door. “you got it.”

Bucky nods awkwardly, backing into the living room where Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone rests half way completed on the window seat.

“Harry Potter, huh?” Steve points to the book.

Bucky ducks his head in a boyish way that makes Steve think of visits to Coney Island. “’S a kids book, right?”

Steve shakes his head, shrugging off the khaki coat he had on over his oversized check shirt. “I liked them. They get more advanced as they go along.”

“There’s more than one of them?” Bucky asks, carefully trying not to betray his excitement.

A grin curls Steve’s mouth, he nods over at the bookshelf in the corner. It had been empty this morning and now Bucky looks over at six more books resting in their book jackets on the top shelf.

“Seven books?” Bucky asks, feeling somewhat slack jawed.

“Seven books.” Steve confirms, his chest feeling warm at seeing how this is the happiest he’s seen Bucky since France. He gets a flash of Bucky back in the lab with his missing arm and the serene look on his face. “Did you get something to eat?” he asks, thoroughly changing the subject.

Bucky sighs, “Yeah, some toast. Coffee.”

“Think you might want to go to lunch at the diner?” Steve asks, nodding at the window. And judging by the way that Bucky’s hands clench against the dishes in his hands, and how his face pales, it’s clearly the wrong thing to say.

Bucky shakes his head mechanically, walking past Steve to the kitchen to put his dishes in the sink with a soft clatter. “No, that’s okay. You should go though, if you want. I’ll have something here.”

The blush that left Bucky’s cheeks has migrated completely to the back of his neck. Embarrassment. Steve recalls that all too well. Never having enough money for anything. Losing their jobs. Having the heat turned off. Dropping out of school.

“No, Bucky. I want to stay here with you. That’s what this is about.” Steve says, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.

Bucky brings his hands to the counter, his back still facing Steve when he lets his breath out in a deep shudder. “It just doesn’t feel safe.” He says it so softly Steve can only barely catch what Bucky’s said.

“Nothing can hurt you here Bucky.” Steve reminds him.

Bucky’s hands curl around the lip of the counter. “No. It’s not safe for them.”

Oh. OH. oh.

Now Steve’s wringing his own hand. “I’m saying this, not because I think you’re stupid. Sometimes you’re an idiot, but you’re not stupid. No one in here could possibly know those words. Know their order. Or speak them by accident in conversation.”

Bucky lowers his head, the silhouette of him shrinking. “But you do.”

Steve opens and closes his mouth over and over again. “Bucky, I would _never_. I wouldn’t do that to you. I want to _stop_ it. Get you back to us.”

“You can’t be sure you’ll be able to get it all out of me, get what they did to me out of my head. I don’t know what I know. What they made me forget. What might be hiding inside—“ Bucky’s spiraling. The flush on the back of his neck has spread to his ears and Steve can see beads of sweat wicking into the fabric of his pajamas.

Steve makes the choice to step forward and curl his hand around Bucky’s shoulder. It seemed okay to do it last night. And when he does it now, Bucky goes stock still, not even breathing.

“It’s okay, Buck. We’re not going to be able to deal with all of this in a matter of hours or days even. But I think we can use this place as a stepping stone, explore some of the things that were done.” Bucky coils even more tightly under Steve’s hand at the last sentence. Steve steps closer, pressing his smaller body to Bucky’s back in a fairly new gesture for the both of them.

Sure they had hugged before the war and were closer than any other friend’s Steve’s ever known, but this is a prolonged and extensive amount of contact, even for them. But it worked last night to calm Bucky, and so Steve chances it.

First Bucky lets the breath he had been holding out, and then a warm hand curls around Steve’s wrist, just keeping it in his possession. Steve presses his head to Bucky’s back, between his shoulder blades in relief.

“We’re always going to be different than who we were.” Steve says into the flannel of Bucky’s pajamas. “There’s no way we couldn’t be. But I know that some day the world is going to see you for the man I know you to be. And that starts here, buddy. Can you give me the first word?”

Bucky is silent. They stand there for a minute? An hour? Who knows. But when Bucky breathes out a word in a scared whimper, Steve feels it reverberate in his bones.

“желание.”

Steve closes his eyes against Bucky’s back and his arms tighten. He doesn’t need Bucky to explain himself. He knows what the word means and what its taken Bucky to utter it.

Longing.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I love kudos and comments!


End file.
